


Liabilities

by lucifel



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-28
Updated: 2010-12-28
Packaged: 2017-10-14 04:52:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/145572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucifel/pseuds/lucifel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which not-Anthea kidnaps John and waits for Sherlock to notice.  (And Mycroft takes exception.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Liabilities

**Author's Note:**

> Re-Post from August 2010. One allusion to episode 3.

On a rainy Monday evening, not-Anthea parks her Bentley two streets past the Tesco's with the self-checkout machine from hell and waits for John Watson to arrive. It's a curious neighborhood for such an expensive car and a curious car for so civilian a city as London. The car, her car - not Mycroft's, has tinted windows and sits low to the ground. It has tell tale signs of heavy armor plating and hardly legible license plates. John, if he's learnt anything from Sherlock at all, will notice the incongruity immediately.

He does.

"Going my way?" He asks as he gets in to her car, gingerly shutting the door which she locks behind him before signaling her driver to move. He's two minutes later than she'd expected, but carrying an extra jug of milk for her trouble. She doesn't understand the milk thing, knows perfectly well that Sherlock doesn't drink any.

"Right then," John tries when she doesn't acknowledge him, "how have you been?"

The plastic bags crunch unpleasantly when he moves his legs, when he shifts towards her. They've done this often enough now that his uncertainty in her presence has evaporated. She does her best to suppress her wince at the scent of his shampoo. Anthea hates the smell of John Watson's shampoo.

"Great John," she hears him answer himself in a sarcastic falsetto when she continues to tap away on Mycroft's phone, "absolute peaches!"

She very carefully flashes him an absent smile and inhales in just such a way that her breasts heave.

He's immediately distracted. She's immediately disgusted.

His eyes stay on her chest.

Anthea reminds herself that simply shooting him would be sloppy; keeps her fingers moving over the keys in the few moments of blessed silence his lust buys her. It makes her skin crawl, how easily she could lead him around by his cock if she wanted to. But she doesn't. She really, _really_ , doesn't.

She wonders whether Sherlock has noticed this trait of John's. Wonders if he simply doesn't care that his flat mate, his supposed _friend_ is actually a bit of a dog. Or, rather, would be a bit of a dog if he ever left Sherlock's side long enough to pull. Anthea is grateful that he doesn't. She really would shoot John if he ever slobbered over her the way he clearly wants to. It makes her wonder whether Sherlock is actually more idiot-savant than sociopath.

Anthea derails the thought before it goes anywhere, just in time to hear John ask, "So what's Mycroft want this time? Has Sherlock finally succeeded in blocking his calls?" She watches John from the corner of her eye, sees him sigh and heave his shoulders when she continues to ignore him. She hears him mutter, "I'm not his bloody keeper." after a few minutes of uncomfortable silence.

Anthea almost laughs at that one, wants to tell him just how easy he has it. Contemplates inventing a story about how, some nights, she sits in her bathroom and chokes down the screams while she uncurls her prematurely arthritic fingers. Contemplates telling him how twenty hours a day of managing Mycroft's blackberry leaves her eyes too blurry to see. How, under her makeup, she looks more exhausted than a coke whore in need of a fix. They're only half lies after all. He might even believe them.

On the other hand, if he interprets her inventions as a cry for a white knight, she might never be rid of him. Men like him were like that. All too quick to believe that men like Mycroft hired women like her to be nothing more than attractive pieces of arm candy.

Idiots.

It made them easier to use.

She lets a few more minutes go by, counts them out in her head. "I've kidnapped you." She tells him eventually. Without a smile.

He hesitates only a moment before deciding to interpret it as flirting, smiles at her with his elbows leaned on his knees, tilted forward in his seat. She barely prevents herself from leaning away. "I can't imagine Mycroft asking you to do that. Well, not the asking part."

"He didn't." He hadn't.

It's only then that he notices where they're headed.

"Wait a minute. Why - ?" Her claim of a kidnapping doesn't seem half so ridiculous to him now. "Anthea -."

"Not Anthea."

"Yes, we've established that but -." His phone beeps. She knows before he looks that it's from Sherlock and that he's decided John's been gone too long. John's sigh of exasperation confirms this.

She checks the timer she'd set when the car had parked.

Twelve minutes. Twenty-three seconds.

"You may tell him that you are with me. And that you'll be home in another ten minutes." She notices that John appears to boggle at her ability to string two sentences together.

Twenty two minutes and twenty-three seconds. It's incredibly inconvenient.

They arrive at 221B Baker Street exactly ten minutes later. Sherlock is waiting on the front stairs and John, as per his usual, has no idea what's just happened or why. "So you... picked me up just to drive me 'round?" He asks rather daftly.

"Precisely." She replies, though that isn't precise at all and the imprecision makes her want to grind her teeth. Anthea's trained herself out of that habit though, she hasn't the spare time for dental work anymore. Hasn't for years.

"Right then." He mumbles, he's always mumbling - she doesn't know how Sherlock deals with it, before gathering his bags together and fumbling his way out of her car.

"Bye."

Sherlock is waiting for him and she's careful not to make eye contact in the brief second that they see each other. She knows, already, that Sherlock's eyes will dart every which way as he runs his hands over John's shoulders to assure himself that the man's really there. He'll stand, at first, too close, and then too far to make up for the closeness as he's been wont to do since that night they blew up that pool.

Anthea doesn't need to see these things, she already knows. But she watches through the rearview anyway as they walk into the house.

Three traffic lights later, Anthea is unsurprised to find the car door pulled open and Mycroft sitting down beside her while the car waits. She considers him, smiles. She is maybe a _little_ surprised that he made the effort to come in person. He smells entirely different from John, wool and sandalwood and expensive stationary instead of shampoo.

"Twelve minutes and twenty three seconds?" He asks.

"Yes."

"You realize of course that he'll pester me about it to no end."

"Yes."

"Which will be... interesting given that I -."

" _Yes._ "

She's one of the few people who dares to cut him off mid sentence like that. He, in turn, doesn't fake any social niceties with her.

Silence prevails for only a moment before he pulls the blackberry from her hand and flings it out his window into the traffic. Anthea isn't concerned; it's armed with a self destruct and she's got the back up in her purse.

"So what," Mycroft asks, "did you think your little kidnapping accomplished?"

"We have a timeframe -."

"That I had guessed for myself already." Meaning his estimate had been accurate down to the second.

She lets out a little huff of air, finally turning to look him in the eye. "John Watson is a liability." That he should be eliminated from all their lives is implied. She doesn't add that he doesn't love Sherlock, at least not that she can see. The car's stopped again.

Mycroft sighs and Anthea cannot tell whether it's real  
.  
"Alice," He's hesitating. She wants to know who the act is for, "you are too."

The implication is absurd, but as he gets out of their vehicle she finds herself unable to breath, all her thoughts and instincts scattered to the winds by real, honest fear.

She misses his point completely.

~ Fin.


End file.
